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Whitestone is dirty and half destroyed and absolutely freezing, and Keyleth thinks she loves it.
"I think I love it here!" she yells in Percy's ear, gesturing sloppily with her free hand around their perch. Percy leans back and squints at her hand, as if she might be gesturing at something specific around them. They're sitting on top of one of the guard parapets around Whitestone Castle, because Keyleth had wanted to see the stars and Percy had wanted to be somewhere where none of his new subjects could see him getting drunk.
They are both extremely, extremely drunk, but that is besides the point, which is-
"Not here on the parapet," Keyleth clarifies. "Here in Whitestone. I love it here."
Percy nods seriously, and then grabs hastily for his glasses, which had been sliding down his nose for the better part of an hour and are now clattering noisily towards the edge of the tower. "I love it here too," he tells her, once everything has been secured once more. "It- Keyleth, you don't even know. It's so beautiful here. In the winter, the snow is everywhere, and it feels like there's nothing else anywhere. Nowhere else. And, we have to- in the spring, there are all these wild little flowers, I don't know what they are - we have to come back in the spring, and I'll show you and you can-"
"I'll tell you what they are!" Keyleth finishes triumphantly, and they toast this plan. Percy pours them both another goblet. They're using the de Rolo Summer Festivus Goblets, which had been the first goblets Percy had seen when they were poking through the cupboards earlier, and which had almost certainly never seen any beverage as pedestrian as the bathtub ale they're currently drinking. When they had their first glass, Percy had taught her the official Summer Festivus blessing to Pelor. He had cleared his throat importantly every third word, and assured her that it was an absolutely essential part of the blessing. "If you don't clear your throat enough, Pelor will curse the harvest," he said in the intonations of someone repeating an inside joke, and then they had had to finish that first glass very quickly to not lose the jovial mood.
That's another reason they're drinking alone on top of a guard tower in the middle of the night - Keyleth loves all of her friends dearly, but right now, she and Percy need to just drink and say ridiculous things and not be serious at any point. If Scanlan and Grog were around, Percy might feel the need to play straightman to their antics, and he'd certainly not want to be too ridiculously drunk around Vex, and Vax, well.
Keyleth drinks half her goblet in three huge gulps.
Percy frowns a little at her. "Okay?" he asks, leaning into her shoulder a bit. Keyleth sighs and leans back on him.
"Okay," she says, willing it to be true. "Percy?"
"Keyleth," he answers.
"Tell me something lovely, Percy."
Percy hums a bit and takes a long sip of his ale. His nose crinkles every time he drinks, but Keyleth doesn't think he's aware of it. She never wants anyone to ever clue him in. If she ever sees Percy take a drink of terrible ale and not instinctively turn up his nose, she'll probably just have to hold a day of mourning.
"Something lovely," he muses, and then gives her a very sly look. "How about when you're fighting something terrible, and all of a sudden in front of you, Vax just whooshes out of the shadows and throws his daggers and smirks all, 'ooh, here I am, devilish and debonair,' and then vanishes again."
Keyleth knows exactly the smirk Percy is talking about, can see the movements in her mind as clearly as if Vax was attacking something right in front of her. It is a lovely sight. Vax is always lovely, but smirking mid-fight is a particularly good look on him. At any other moment, she'd probably blush and giggle back at Percy, and maybe tease him back or maybe just meander off onto another topic, but right now, with everything-
Keyleth stands abruptly, so suddenly that Percy loses his balance and slops ale over his wrist, and jumps down off the parapet. It's not a particularly long jump, just down onto the walkway that borders the castle grounds, but haste and ale make her stumble into the guard wall and curse. She hears Percy's confused "Keyleth?" behind her and she ducks inside the room they were sitting over.
It's a small room, with an unlit torch on one wall and a staircase to the ground floor opposite it. Keyleth lights the torch and slumps against the wall underneath it, feeling out of sorts and confused, and extremely grumpy about it.
After a moment, Percy slides to the floor next to her.
"Was it something I said?" he asks, a little humor covering the honest concern in his voice.
Keyleth scowls at her feet. "We're having a nice night," she insists. "No seriousness. Only nice things and feelings-"
"-and terrible ale-"
"-and terrible ale," she agrees.
She feels Percy nod seriously beside her. He's sat close enough that his chin bumps her shoulder when he moves. He reaches forward and links his fingers with hers. "Put the blame on me," he suggests, "and tell me quickly what the problem is, so I can fix it and we can get back to revelry and terrible choices."
"You can't fix this," Keyleth tells him, knowing even as she does that he'll scoff and deny it.
He does. "I can fix anything," he says, as much pompous nobility in his voice as he can manage to put there. "I don't know if you've heard, but I'm a genius."
She smiles, just for a second. Sometimes, she loves Percy so much that she feels like she'll bubble over with it, like maybe her heart is a pot left on a fire too long, and all the blood in it has been boiling and boiling, and any minute, blood is going to come spilling over the sides and out her ears. It's kind of gross and sweet at the same time, which is very Percy.
She squeezes his hand, turns her head carefully so that she can't see any part of his body at all, and says, "Vax said he loves me."
Percy inhales sharply, and then makes an obvious effort to suppress any other reactions.
"And- you didn't meet him, but remember when I said Kashaw kissed me?"
"I do," Percy said, voice quiet and level.
Keyleth tries to match her breathing to his, to copy his tone with her voice, to steal some of his calm for her own. "Well- well. Those things happened. And I'm- I don't- I don't know."
Percy considers this for a little while, and then asks, "Did you not want Kashaw to kiss you?"
Keyleth sighs, frustrated. "No?" she says. "I wasn't expecting it! I didn't have any warning to want or not want it, but it wasn't bad, really. It just happened. And with Vax saying...what he said, it's the same. I wasn't expecting that at all. He expects me to do something, to respond to that in some way, and I don't know how or anything. It's just all confusing."
Percy makes a sympathetic noise in his throat. "It sounds confusing," he says.
Keyleth scoots around to look at him, careful to keep close. Sometimes Percy can read a lot more into things she does than she means, and she doesn't want him to worry that her upset is because of him. "How do you know when you want someone to kiss you," she asks, studying his face.
His eyebrows furrow together and he bites the inside of his cheek a little, thinking. One of Keyleth's favorite things about Percy is that he thinks very seriously about questions he doesn't know the answer to, no matter what sort of question it is. He responds the same way to Vex asking if he can create a brand new type of arrow as he does to Scanlan wondering out loud how gelatinous cubes procreate.
After a moment, his eyes refocus on hers, and he says, "I'm not sure. I don't know that I really ever have, properly."
"What do you mean, properly?"
Percy gives her a half-smile that looks more weary than happy. "I'm afraid that conversation is getting very far away from revelry."
Keyleth waves this protest away impatiently. "We'll drink two glasses after this to make up for it."
He concedes the point, and then looks away from her. "I didn't have crushes as a younger man. It's very isolated here in Whitestone, I'm afraid, and most of the youths nearby worked for my family, so that was- problematic. I was very quiet, and I didn't have the patience for navigating the, shall we say, muddy waters of dallying with the help."
"Probably a good thing," Keyleth interjects, and Percy gives her another half-smile.
"I agree. So, my first real crush, I'm sorry to say, was Dr. Ripley."
It's Keyleth's turn to ruthlessly crush any type of reaction. Percy focuses his gaze at something just over Keyleth's shoulder, and his fingers flex in her grip.
"She was new, and clever, and mysterious, and- she listened to me," he confesses. "My family loved me, of course, but they rarely listened to me. I was too young, or too interested in odd things or- well. This is not the point. What I was trying to say was, my experience with wanting to be...ah...close to someone, in that way, is limited to Anna. And knowing now what I know about the sort of person she is, it makes the whole thing seem...I don't know. Bad, I suppose?"
"Oh, Percy," Keyleth says.
"I'm sorry I can't help clarify things for you," he says.
Keyleth huffs, frustrated. "I'm sorry too," she says. "You deserve to know what it's like, kissing people and having that be a nice thing. And so do I. We both deserve nice kissing."
Percy laughs a little. "Hear, hear," he says. "If only we could kiss each other, we'd be set."
Keyleth laughs as well, and then considers it, and then says, "We could absolutely kiss each other."
Percy looks at her for a long moment, studying her expression, and then says, "I'm not sure how Vax would feel about that."
"Who cares about Vax?"
"Well, he's very sneaky," Percy points out, "and he has lots of pointy things, and I'd very much prefer if he didn't sneak around and stab me with them."
Keyleth scowls. "If he does, then I'll stab him," she says. "But he wouldn't, anyway. He said he loves me, and when you love someone, you don't sneak around and stab their best friend."
Percy makes his seriously considering face again, and then nods, slowly. "Alright, I suppose that makes sense. So, we'll kiss each other a bit, and then we'll both know what that's like, and then we'll be able to sort out who of Kashaw and Vax you want to kiss, and then we'll both go have three more drinks on the roof, and probably make some very poor choices after that."
Keyleth nods, and then announces, "Percy, I am going to kiss you now!", and then she does so.
She bangs her nose against his, and when he opens his mouth to complain at her, he ends up licking her lip. It's ridiculous, and not exactly what Keyleth would consider 'nice'. She giggles a little against Percy, and he huffs in exaggerated offense, and then they come together again.
Their second attempt is at least a little more coordinated than the first. Percy is warm against Keyleth's mouth, and his hand is familiar in hers, and although there isn't any thrill in her chest like there was when Kashaw kissed her, there also isn't any confusion or worry. Keyleth knows Percy, knows that he loves her just as much and in the exact way that she loves him. Even with all the revelations of the past weeks, she is sure of him.
She is less sure of the kissing.
Keyleth knows that kissing is supposed to be a wonderful thing, something that takes breath away and sends hearts aflutter. Her kiss with Kashaw was so brief that she barely had a chance to realize it was happening before it was over, and these are more awkward than emotional. Percy keeps tilting his head suddenly, like he's trying to nod against her mouth, and Keyleth's neck is stretched awkwardly across to meet him, and she is very, very aware of the fact that kissing is happening, like if she were to turn around very quickly, she'd see a glimpse of a banner saying PERCIVAL AND KEYLETH ARE LIP TO LIP AT THIS VERY MOMENT flying across the night sky.
All at once, Keyleth realizes that she's been holding her breath, and exhales all at once, right into Percy's face.
"Oops," she says, and then bursts out laughing at the look on his face. The ale-tasting nose crinkle has returned in full force.
"That was very rude," he says sternly, and she laughs even harder. After a moment, he starts laughing too, and they have to take several minutes to recover themselves and reorganize.
"You're too short," Keyleth says, once she can breathe again. "It's weird."
"I'm perfectly sized for my purposes, thank you," he says. "You don't move at all, it's like making out with a statue."
Keyleth gasps, offended. "I'm focusing on enjoying the moment!" she says.
Percy rolls his eyes. "Well, stop," he says, and then sits up onto his knees and leans into her.
They kiss for a long time, slowly learning what works, and what doesn't. Percy leans more and more of his weight into her as they go on, and Keyleth finds that she likes the pressure, that his warmth and closeness help her settle into the moment. When they break apart for the last time, her lips are buzzing faintly, and she feels happy, right down to her bones, and tired. She settles back to lay on the floor and tugs Percy along with her.
"We are not sleeping on the floor," Percy protests, but he sounds content and sleepy, and when Keyleth looks at him, he's already got his eyes closed. They shuffle limbs and rearrange; Keyleth pillows her hand on an arm and tucks her feet between Percy's legs while he curls his arm around her waist.
Before she drops off to sleep, Keyleth cranes her neck down and presses a kiss to the nearest part of Percy's head. "Thanks," she whispers.
"Any time," he whispers back.
The quiet stretches on. Keyleth closes her eyes, and drifts contentedly, before a thought occurs and she nudges Percy. "Hey, are you still awake?"
"No," Percy says.
"Was I good? At the end, I mean, not at the beginning."
Percy grumbles a little into her collarbone. "You mean, if I were Kashaw, or Vax, would I be wooed by your romantic skills?"
Keyleth kicks him a little. "Shut up," she says, "but, yeah. Would you?"
"Nine out of ten," Percy assures her. "Would kiss again."
"Nine? Why, because I breathed in your face?"
"Oh, I forgot you did that. Eight and a half, then. No, nine, because you're too tall and it's weird."
Keyleth kicks him again, and laughs, and then, they sleep.